sqrkl@csvax.liv.ac.uk (06/16/88)
In article <2910@tekig4.TEK.COM>, bradn@tekig4.TEK.COM (Bradford Needham) writes: > I'm confused by the recent posting of the VT100 Maculator -- is it a demo > of a later (shareware) version, or is it an early version of a free program? I must apologise profusely if the status of the program wasn't made clear : it's a complete FREEBIE (Shareware has failed dismally here in the UK) and I will be distributing version 1.32 with all the bugs fixed that have been reported to me within the next month or so. It is a relatively early version - I thought I'd release it now to get feedback on improvements (some suggestions have been downright BIZARRE) and find out what major bugs are still hiding in there... > On a related note, why do people keep building terminal emulators, text editors, > and communications protocols when there are so many novel applications waiting > to be written? I think that the Mac has had the 'novel applications' arena sewn up recently. Most companies are tending to release more flashy painting programs and word processors at the rate of about one a day... > Is there really a market for yet-another-darn-good-VT100 emulator? I only wrote the 'Maculator' because I was fed up with the lousiness of the terminal emulation of (very expensive) commercial programs (e.g. VersaTerm Pro, MacTerminal, Red Ryder 10.0 onwards, etc. etc.). Hence, I thought it was about time someone spent energy on the emulation side of things and not just tack on pretty but useless features... 'VT100 Maculator' will NEVER be commercially marketed because : 1) It's not good enough yet, 2) There are already, as you pointed out, n-zillion VT100 terminal emulators and, most importantly, 3) It has a silly name. Richard K. Lloyd, ****** This is a VAX 11/780 running VAX/VMS V4.5 ****** Computer Science Dept., * JANET : SQRKL@UK.AC.LIV.CSVAX * Liverpool University, * UUCP : {backbone}!mcvax!ukc!mupsy!liv-cs!SQRKL * Merseyside, England, * Internet : SQRKL%csvax.liv.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu * Great Britain. ******************************************************* "My opinions and those of the University of Liverpool are completely unrelated, so I'M THE CULPRIT if you feel offended by the above message - I just can't help moaning about Atari STs, PCs or clones, U**X, C, IBM mainframes, the list is endless..."